walked out of the prison with Elizabeth, and started off, he knew not whither. Being totally unacquainted with the country around Ilchester, he so completely lost his way that by daybreak he had wandered back towards his prison sufficiently near to hear the bell tolling for his own execution. At this crisis he met a collier carrying a bag of coals on his horse; and discovering by a few words that the man was a Royalist he revealed his state and implored his protection. The collier at once took him up on his horse and conveyed him to his own cabin, a lonely habitation on the edge of a Here they put in readiness all the fire-arms the

common.

place could furnish, and kept a look out.

In the meantime the cheat being discovered in the castle, the magnanimous Margery is led before Colonel Disbrowe, who threatens her with instant execution unless she reveals her brother's retreat. This of course she is unable to do, but she frankly declares herself to be the contriver of the rescue and that she had great difficulty in persuading her brother to acquiesce. The two sisters are therefore both put under arrest, and a body of eight or ten troopers are dispatched to scour the neighbourhood in pursuit of "a man in woman's clothes." Their search having lasted through the day, they actually find their way to the collier's lone house in the night time, and demand admittance. The Colonel and his friend are planted at the window armed with muskets; the good wife stationed in the rear, holds the ammunition. And now an absurd parley ensues: the collier appears to be half asleep, and ridicules the soldiers for coming on such an errand. In order "to let the gentlemen in," he makes ineffectual efforts to strike a light, which end in the upsetting of the tinder-box, and induce the Captain to say to his men "Come let us be off to some more likely place: there is no one here but that stupid fellow who appears not to know his right hand from his left," and accordingly the troop gallop off.

The account then goes on to state that Colonel Hunt,

arrayed in collier's garb in lieu of his sister's, speedily found his way to the sea-coast and thence to the Court of the exiled Charles in France:-that Cromwell, enraged at his escape, confiscated the whole of his estates; and not only kept the two sisters in prison but threatened to execute Margery unless her brother returned to England; and that the Colonel resolving to rescue them by casting himself at the Usurper's feet, was only prevented from this form of self sacrifice by Charles placing him under nominal arrest. At the Restoration of royalty, Mr. Hunt returned to England, in the same vessel with the King, but discovered ere long that the event was no restoration of his own ancestral possessions. These being now in the hands of men whom it was no part of the King's policy to irritate, Mr. Hunt's services. were rewarded with an offer of the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, which he indignantly refused; and retiring into Wiltshire lived with his wife and sisters on his small estate at Enford which the sequestrators had overlooked.

Such in an abridged form is the narrative preserved in the Memoirs of the late Henry Hunt, an episode in the family history which he was very fond of reviving in order to shew that he came of a stock which had always resisted oppressors. But he surely makes a mistake when asserting that the sequestrators overlooked the Enford estate. The sequestrators overlooked nothing; and Thomas Hunt had already compounded for his estate at Longstreet in the parish of Enford in 1645. The charge against Cromwell of entire confiscation cannot therefore be accepted.

The story of the prisoner's escape in the disguise of his sister's dress, is on the other hand fully corroborated by a letter preserved in Thurloe's State papers, written to Disbrowe by two of the Somerset magistrates, J. Cary and J. Barker. It is worth adding, as an illustration of the manner in which traditions become distorted, that at West Knoyle were long preserved portraits of Mr. Willoughby (implicated in the

same plot) and of his second wife Mary, which Lady was traditionally reported to have contrived her husband's escape in the manner above attributed to Mistress Margery Hunt: the impropriety of connecting the story with the Willoughby family requiring no further proof than the simple fact that Mr. Willoughby was acquitted by the petty jury at Salisbury. THE TORN CURTAIN.

During these trials occurred the incident which is thus commemorated in the Spectator:

"Every one who is acquainted with Westminster School knows that there is a curtain which used to be drawn across the room to separate the upper school from the lower. A youth happened by some mischance to tear the above mentioned curtain. The severity of the master [Busby] was too well known for the criminal to expect any pardon for such a fault; so that the boy, who was of a meek temper, was terrified to death at the thought of his appearance, when his friend who sat near him bade him be of good cheer, for that he would take the fault upon himself. He kept his word accordingly.

"As soon as they were grown up to be men, the civil war broke out, in which our two friends took the opposite sides, one of them following the Parliament the other the Royal party. As their tempers were different, the youth who had torn the curtain endeavoured to raise himself on the civil list; and the other, who had borne the blame of it, on the military. The first succeeded so well that he was in a short time made a Judge under the Protector: the other was engaged in the unhappy enterprise of Penruddocke and Grove in the West. I suppose, Sir, I need not acquaint you with the result of that undertaking. Every one knows that the Royal party was routed, and all the heads of them, among whom was the curtain-champion, imprisoned at Exeter. It happened to be his friend's lot at that time to go the Western Circuit. The trial of the rebels, as they were then called, was very short, and nothing now remained but to pass sentence on them; when the Judge, hearing the name of his old friend and observing his face more attentively, which he had not seen for many years, asked him whether he was not formerly a Westminster Scholar. By the answer he was soon convinced that it was his former generous friend; and without saying anything more at the time, made the best of his way to London, where, employing all his power and interest with the Protector, he saved his friend from the fate of his unhappy associates. The gentleman whose life was thus preserved by the gratitude of his schoolfellow was afterwards the father of a son whom he lived to see promoted in the Church, and who still deservedly fills one of the highest stations in it." Spectator. No. 313. Written in the year 1711-12, February 28th.

T

The two persons here alluded to are, first, William Wake of Blandford, father of William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury; the other is Judge Robert Nicholas of All-Cannings. M.P. for Devizes in the Long Parliament. But the writer is wrong in representing Nicholas as giving judgment. Both he and Rolle, though they sat on the bench, took no part in the trials, lest the personal indignities to which they had been subjected at Salisbury might seem to bias their decisions. In respect further of Judge Nicholas, see the account of his birth at page 187, as explanatory of his constitutional timidity.

Under fictitious names and attended with accessories inconsistent with the real history of the time, this story of the torn curtain and the recognition of Judge and prisoner, is amplified and illustrated in the 28th number of the modern periodical called The Leisure Hour. The true narrative is at any time better than the fictitious one; but for want of an authenticated sequel we may accept the following version, (substituting "forty years" for "twenty years)."

"Lord D-," said the Magistrate, in tones of deep emotion, "twenty years ago, you showed me your hands, and said to me, Do not be caught meddling with the curtain again, for I can tell you the master hits hard when provoked; and to-day I show you your pardon signed by him who is now the master in England; and in my turn I say to you, Do not be caught again with arms against the Parliament, for I can tell you Cromwell hits hard when provoked." At these words, Sir Patrick and Lord D—, threw themselves into each others arms, and sealed with this embrace a friendship which, notwithstanding the difference of their political opinions, remained uninterrupted during the rest of their lives."

COUNTY COURT AT DEVIZES.

1656. A bill for the holding the Sheriff's Court for the

County of Wilts, in the borough of Devizes, was read in the House of Commons the first time on the 18th of December: and upon the question, ordered to be read the second time on Saturday next. It was not read till Thursday the 25th when the business was committed to the following gentlemen, Major Scotton, Colonel Rous, General Disbrowe, Mr. Robinson, Major-General Packer, Mr. Throckmorton, Colonel Grosvenor, Mr. John Ashe, Mr. James Ashe, all the gentlemen that serve for the County of Wilts and the Boroughs within that county, Mr. Bond, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Blake, Colonel Fitz-James, Mr. Aldworth, the Earl of Salisbury, Mr. Lister, Sir William Strickland, Sir Thomas Wroth, Mr. Bampfield, Captain Hassell, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Trumball, Mr. Thomas Smyth, Mr. Dunch, and Mr. Brewster. This Committee to meet on Saturday next at 2 o'clock in the afternoon in the Dutchy Chamber. Commons' Journals vol. vii. pages 469, 475.

1658. The Sheriff for the County was John Ernle of Bourton in the parish of Bishops Cannings, Esq. His nephew Sir Walter Ernle of Etchilhampton, bart., was Sheriff for 1662.

MARRIAGES.

1654-5-6-7. Marriages recorded in the following manner occasionally occur in the parish registers of this period; though in the great majority of cases, parties naturally preferred that the bans should be published in the church rather than in more public places." Married William Pitt, yeoman, son of Richard Pitt of Lavington, and Mary daughter of William Hunt of Potterne: the bans having been published three times, they were married before Edward Pierce of the Devizes, Justice of Peace for the county, 11th of May 1657. West Lavington Register.-Occasionally marriages were conducted before William Yorke Esq., another Justice of the Peace, but apparently he was not so much in request as Mr.